With people cooking less often because of lack of time or know-how, new opportunities for marketers to turn consumers into fair-weather chefs are brewing.

Consumers are looking for healthy food they can eat fast but that is still well above being ‘fast food.’ It has to be good enough to pass as home-cooked.

One survey calls these consumers ‘kitchen finks’ and they’re coming to a supermarket near you. Campbell Soup Company’s Gardennay, Nestle’s Stouffer’s Bistro Classics, Pinnacle Foods’ Swanson’s Hearty Bowl and the Egg Marketing Agency of Canada are some of the products and marketers responding.

According to Marion Chan, VP food & beverage at Toronto-based research firm NPD Group Canada, Canadians are eating more pre-prepared foods. ‘Fifty-four per cent of all dinners in Canada include at least one prepared or semi-prepared item,’ she says.

According to a September 2003 Decima Research online survey examining cooking habits, the number-one reason (41%) Canadians buy pre-prepared food is that they regularly get home from work late. Research done in 2001 for the Canadian Egg Marketing Agency’s Usage and Attitude Study revealed that consumers are looking for a ‘quick meal solution’ (meals prepared in anywhere from 10 to 23 minutes) an average 4.8 times per week.

There has also been a huge increase over the last 30 years in the number of single-family households in Canada, a trend observers say is also contributing to the popularity of pre-prepared foods and quick-meal solutions. According to Statistics Canada, the number of one-person households has gone from approximately 800,000 in 1971 to 2.9 million in 2001, a significant increase of about 260%.

However, it’s not all about singles. Chan says it’s still families with children that buy the most pre-prepared foods. ‘Where we’re seeing most of the growth is households with children because that’s where the need for a complete meal seems to be the most important, to make sure you have the three components – the protein, the starch and a vegetable.’

What is common to all groups is a lack of time.

‘The underlying need is what the marketers are going to respond to and it’s a combination of two things: food plus fast,’ says Lindsay Meredith, marketing professor at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. ‘The real pressure is that as a result of media coverage [there has been a move toward] a lot more healthy food consumption.’

Campbell’s ‘Power2Cook’ campaign and Gardennay brand soup are examples of how companies are re-strategizing to deal with the changes in consumer behaviour.

‘Consumers desire a restaurant soup they can pass off as their own,’ says Randy Weyersberg, VP marketing, of the insight that led to the creation of Gardennay. The Decima survey found one in 10 people pass off pre-prepared food as their own because, among other things, they think it tastes better and are embarrassed or feel guilty that they didn’t prepare it themselves.

The brand is described as a mouliné-type soup with a creamier texture for a restaurant feel. The flavours are more ‘adult,’ says Weyersberg and include such exotic offerings as autumn carrot, and butternut squash.

Campbell’s calls the psychographic of consumers that gravitates toward these foods ‘kitchen finks’ – people who want to spend more time socializing and less time cooking but want their food to be as good as if it were homemade. They’re also willing to add to the meals, prompting Campbell’s to pursue a strategy of emphasizing garnishing options both on-package and on its Web site.

Gardennay is primarily aimed at young and older adults and households without children.

The TV spot currently in rotation trades on the idea of passing off prepared food as your own. It features a chef trying to get access to Gardennay in a grocery store without tipping anyone off. The spot is by BBDO Toronto and began airing in fall 2003.

Similarly, Campbell’s Power2Cook program focuses on giving consumers simple cooking techniques they can use to prepare quick, nutritious meals.

‘The insight was very simple here,’ says Weyersberg, who points to evidence gleaned via focus groups, one-on-one consumer contact with members of the Campbell’s team and feedback from a 1-800 line. ‘Consumers cook from memory, not from recipe books. And that was an important revelation.

‘We said, maybe we should be promoting cooking techniques. And from that we ended up with a proposition that’s a lot more inspiring and it leads to the concept ‘one method, endless possibilities.”

Organized into themed waves, the program offers such information as stir-fry or skillet cooking with different foods. Power2Cook (www.power2cook.ca) launched in August of last year with the Web as the lead element and will be a year-long, annual program, according to Weyersberg.

The company has also formed a partnership with the Food Network where Campbell’s sponsors the former’s ‘Countdown to Dinner’ time-slot, a branded section of programming that runs from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Toronto-based agency Proximity produced a series of TV spots that run on the network and feature chef Damon, a young, Gen X type preparing quick meals. Damon appears four times for between one and two minutes.

Says Weyersberg, ‘What you would have normally expected from Campbell’s would have been the stereotypical mother-in-the-kitchen scenario and we believe that’s not really reflective of what consumers represent today in the market. We’re moving away from a soup company to be more of a food company and through these types of efforts we’re trying to demonstrate that.’

Meredith, for one, applauds Campbell’s strategy not only for appealing to young people, who are a prime component of the kitchen fink demo, but also for leading with the Web. ‘When you’re dealing with that kind of socio-economic group you’ve got to go where they hang out and one of those places is the Internet. And as long as you create a Web site that’s attractive to them – it focuses on health food, short solutions – they’re going to come to you.

‘These same people talk a lot to each other. So if I can get one of these heavy-involvement users hooked on the site, that user is going to talk to a whole bunch of other people who are also interested in this stuff but don’t show the same level of involvement. And we know if it’s interpersonal communication, the veracity is sky-high.’

It’s not just singletons who are looking for quick, nutritious meals – the Canadian Egg Marketing Agency’s new spokesperson is a 10-year-old boy and the message is equally geared at families.

‘People are still looking for nutritious meals that can be prepared for, say, dinner time, within 30 minutes,’ says Sylvie Chapron, marketing program manager. ‘They don’t think in advance. They think when they’re driving home and they need ideas. They want to do something or make their family feel that they have prepared the meals themselves. We found from research that people are looking for those ideas more and more.’

The agency arrived at these insights and conclusions after its 2001 Usage and Attitude Study, which is conducted every two years and used to guide marketing strategy.

Launched on Jan. 12, the three TV spots produced by BBDO Montreal run on specialty channels like the Food Network and show the boy preparing egg dishes that can be done in under 30 minutes. Chapron says using a child in the ads was intended to help young people understand how important it is to know how to cook and to show others by association how simple it is to do.

‘We really want to show how simple it is. And most of the time with kids they’ll say, ‘What’s for dinner?’ And that’s the magic question. With them being part of the commercial it shows it’s good for you, that it’s simple and that even a kid can make it.’

The $7.2 million campaign includes direct mail (1.2 million booklets distributed in 2,000 grocery stores nationally and which show the TV recipes), and an online component that features contesting and electronic recipes sent out to loyalty club members in the late afternoon just before people arrive home and make dinner decisions. A PR campaign by Toronto-based Veritas touts the nutritional benefits of eggs.

But the Egg Marketing Agency had an additional goal – reversing a slide in egg consumption that was attributed to health concerns about cholesterol. Consumption was declining for 15 years until 1996, say Chapron, but has been increasing since. In order to spur growth, the agency has promoted eggs as a choice for dinner and not just breakfast.

‘We’re trying to change consumer attitudes and behaviour on a long-term basis,’ says Chapron. ‘So we went from our signature tagline two years ago of ‘So simple, so good,’ to ‘Eggs. So good. Anytime’ and we’ll try to keep that for about five years.’

Meredith says marketers have to capitalize on the desire for quality food and good nutrition and never mind the price – people will pay. ‘You’d better be advanced in your ‘yuppie cuisine’ category – the upscale, deli-style stuff that people who are educated and have income will be attracted to.

‘The tough part of the strategy is you’ve got to reinvent the phrase ‘fast food’ and get rid of the perception consumers have that fast food equals slop. To the extent you bury that effectively and you replace it with high quality and good nutrition, don’t sweat the price.’

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sokalow@brunico.com